From Linda:
I don’t know about you but I love creating form using word chains! I especially love using manipulatives that the students can rearrange to create their own composition. So go ahead and grab that stack of beanie babies you use for tone matching and steady beat activities and Let’s Make Music!
Set out 4 beanie babies in a row and have the students echo you. Each beanie baby will receive 2 beats. Rearrange the 4 and have the students echo you again. Continue the process substituting different beanies and changing the order.
Eventually, start speaking the A section “Let’s Make Music” while you are arranging four beanie babies.
Once you are finished speaking the A section the class should be ready to speak and clap the new beanie baby arrangement. Continue the process – rearranging the beanie babies during the A section.
Repeat the lesson on a different day but add non-pitched percussion instruments in place of clapping the beanie baby arrangement. It would be fun to have the students sit in a circle during this lesson and to pass the instrument to the person on their right while speaking the A section. When they are finished speaking the A section they will have a new instrument to play for the B section! Have them continue to speak the beanie baby arrangement first and then play the rhythm of the words on their new instrument. Continue the process.
Extend the lesson one more day by dividing your class into groups of 3 or 4. Each group should create their own beanie baby composition to speak and play. It will be an eight beat composition with each beanie baby receiving 2 beats. Perform ABABA. Everyone speaks A and a different group performs their composition for one of the B sections.
If you would like a copy of the lesson plan and music for your files click here! http://bit.ly/LetsMakeMusic
Enjoy making music and I’d love to hear how you used the lesson with your students!
From Elaine:
When it comes to working on rhythm-reading in music class, I believe in repetition. Yes, friends, you heard it here first: repetition is key. And there’s nothing wrong with doing the same thing over and over as long as it works. For a long time, I struggled with making rhythm activities more fun. Let’s face it, reading rhythm patterns can be a little boring. So when I’m working with the kiddos reading rhythmic patterns, I like to add a simple backing track. I like to call this “Rhythm Jams”.
Here’s how it goes: because this is a sight-reading game, I display several rhythms on my board and randomly choose one at a time. I usually point to the pattern using my fancy finger-pointer. While the beat track is playing, I count the group off for each of the rhythm patterns. Sometimes, I go back to one we’ve already performed just to see if students are more accurate the second time. After we finish the displayed rhythms, I switch the track and the rhythms. This way the kids can try different rhythms in different tempos. Switching things up frequently adds to the excitement and the amount of time you’re able to continue the repetitive activity. By the end of your Rhythm Jams session, your students will be up out of their seat shaking what their Momma’s gave ‘em. Trust me.
Can’t find a rhythm track to use? Try THIS website. It’s a huge compilation of YouTube videos featuring a wide variety of groovy rhythm tracks.
From David:
One of my favorite things to do when working with rhythm is to teach kids to look for rhythm in everyday words and phrases. You can start introducing this concept on the very first day of class while you’re learning kids' names by saying their name and then clapping the rhythm. Da-vid becomes ta ta. Mel-a-nie becomes ti-ti ta. Kim is ta rest. Mag-da-le-na is ti-ti ti-ti and so on. As soon as you get kids to start thinking that all words have rhythm you have the ability to make anything a game and make any word part of a song.
I’m trained in Orff Schulwerk and in my levels classes we learned about the work of one of Orff’s most influential students, Gunild Keetman. Keetman was originally Orff’s student but quickly became his contemporary as she and Orff worked together to create what we now know as Orff Schulwerk. Keetman had a huge role in the theory behind everything that we learn and do from rhythm to movement, recorder, and more. One of the things that that I love the most from Keetman is her focus on “Rhythmic Building Bricks.” She says that the building bricks are the smallest rhythmic units that we use when we build our songs and rhymes. There are five building bricks that Keetman referred to over and over again for 2/4 and 4/4 time.
Once kids learn to break down phrases with these building bricks they can decode and figure out the rhythms for anything. I usually start with words that kids already know and ask them to think about how many sounds/syllables a word has. I’ll give them a word like “backpack” (two sounds) and ask them to figure out the building brick that goes with it (ta ta). Then we might try out school (one sound) and figure out that it works with the brick ta rest. The most difficult part of all of this is when kids have to decide whether a three sound word is ta ti-ti or ti-ti ta. I try and give them simple words to figure out like “puppy dog” where the sounds are easily separated. There are a million ways you can teach and reinforce this idea that a word has rhythm. I have several sorting games for rhythm centers and interactive SMART board activities that I use to help kids start to categorize words by their rhythm. Eventually I give students other words or a word bank full of words to categorize and sort out.
From there you can do a number of things. Teach kids a nursery rhyme or song and then have them work in small groups or pairs to break it down into its rhythmic building bricks. Here’s an example using the nursery rhyme “Rain, Rain, Go Away.”
I’m trained in Orff Schulwerk and in my levels classes we learned about the work of one of Orff’s most influential students, Gunild Keetman. Keetman was originally Orff’s student but quickly became his contemporary as she and Orff worked together to create what we now know as Orff Schulwerk. Keetman had a huge role in the theory behind everything that we learn and do from rhythm to movement, recorder, and more. One of the things that that I love the most from Keetman is her focus on “Rhythmic Building Bricks.” She says that the building bricks are the smallest rhythmic units that we use when we build our songs and rhymes. There are five building bricks that Keetman referred to over and over again for 2/4 and 4/4 time.
From there you can do a number of things. Teach kids a nursery rhyme or song and then have them work in small groups or pairs to break it down into its rhythmic building bricks. Here’s an example using the nursery rhyme “Rain, Rain, Go Away.”
Try an example with the whole class to explain the process and then break them into small groups and give each one a different nursery rhyme to work on. Once the students have figured out their rhythm have them speak the poem and then speak the rhythm. Then have them clap the rhythm or play the rhythm on rhythm sticks. After 3 or 4 minutes, have the groups switch so that students can do the same activity with a different poem. Looking for good nursery rhymes to use in class? I have a free list of them on my blog. Check out the link here:
http://www.makemomentsmatter.org/rhymes.html
This last fall I took this idea of rhythm building bricks and turned it into a center game. I had little cards with different words and their corresponding rhythms. Students sorted out all the words (about 30 of them total) into five different piles – one for each of the building brick rhythms. Then they arranged them into patterns and wrote down the patterns they created. Every kid walked away from class with a rhythm that they composed using the different rhythmic words. This meant that they gained experience arranging rhythms into different measures and phrases (a composition activity) and they reinforced the idea that each word has its own specific rhythm. Here’s a picture of my kiddos in action.
From Tracy:
I have found that rhythm skills can be tricky to differentiate in my classroom. Usually we work on rhythms as a whole group or in sections. I plan centers that allow me to work with small groups but struggled for many years to find a way to challenge my gifted students and provide rhythmic remediation for others. Here are a couple of my favorite websites and apps for differentiating rhythm skill work.
Music Tech Teacher has several activities and quizzes that address rhythm skills. I use Rhythm Billionaire with 5th graders and Listening to Rhythms with 3rd graders. I think you’ll find several activities there that your students will enjoy.
http://musictechteacher.com/music_quizzes/music_quizzes.htm
Rhythm Trainer is great for targeting specific notes and note combinations. It can work well with 1st grade through high school. Choose the notes you want to use and then start. Students hear a rhythm and then click the notes given to recreate the rhythm.
http://www.therhythmtrainer.com/
Rhythm Cat is an app that works best on an iPad. It starts with very simple rhythms. You tap the iPad to play the rhythm and it gauges if you have played it correctly. Complete the rhythm with only a slight mistake or two and you progress to the next level. Each level comes with an explanation of the duration of the new notes and most levels have a rhythm track and guiding melody.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rhythm-cat-learn-to-read-music/id488167475?mt=8
Rhythm Repeat is another app that I really enjoy. I use it to challenge my gifted musicians. It is a little like the electronic Simon games in the way you play. You will hear a melody and have to tap it back in rhythm using 3 different colored dots. The difficulty increases quickly and will prove to be an exciting challenge to your students who need it. Difficulty can be set and uses more dots (pitches), increased tempo and more complex patterns. FUN!
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rhythm-repeat/id455680974?mt=8
http://www.makemomentsmatter.org/rhymes.html
This last fall I took this idea of rhythm building bricks and turned it into a center game. I had little cards with different words and their corresponding rhythms. Students sorted out all the words (about 30 of them total) into five different piles – one for each of the building brick rhythms. Then they arranged them into patterns and wrote down the patterns they created. Every kid walked away from class with a rhythm that they composed using the different rhythmic words. This meant that they gained experience arranging rhythms into different measures and phrases (a composition activity) and they reinforced the idea that each word has its own specific rhythm. Here’s a picture of my kiddos in action.
From Tracy:
I have found that rhythm skills can be tricky to differentiate in my classroom. Usually we work on rhythms as a whole group or in sections. I plan centers that allow me to work with small groups but struggled for many years to find a way to challenge my gifted students and provide rhythmic remediation for others. Here are a couple of my favorite websites and apps for differentiating rhythm skill work.
Music Tech Teacher has several activities and quizzes that address rhythm skills. I use Rhythm Billionaire with 5th graders and Listening to Rhythms with 3rd graders. I think you’ll find several activities there that your students will enjoy.
http://musictechteacher.com/music_quizzes/music_quizzes.htm
Rhythm Trainer is great for targeting specific notes and note combinations. It can work well with 1st grade through high school. Choose the notes you want to use and then start. Students hear a rhythm and then click the notes given to recreate the rhythm.
http://www.therhythmtrainer.com/
Rhythm Cat is an app that works best on an iPad. It starts with very simple rhythms. You tap the iPad to play the rhythm and it gauges if you have played it correctly. Complete the rhythm with only a slight mistake or two and you progress to the next level. Each level comes with an explanation of the duration of the new notes and most levels have a rhythm track and guiding melody.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rhythm-cat-learn-to-read-music/id488167475?mt=8
Rhythm Repeat is another app that I really enjoy. I use it to challenge my gifted musicians. It is a little like the electronic Simon games in the way you play. You will hear a melody and have to tap it back in rhythm using 3 different colored dots. The difficulty increases quickly and will prove to be an exciting challenge to your students who need it. Difficulty can be set and uses more dots (pitches), increased tempo and more complex patterns. FUN!
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rhythm-repeat/id455680974?mt=8
Hope you and your students enjoy these rhythm activities! Sing, Teach, Love!
Love the beanie baby idea! Someone is donating a bag full of beanie babies and I am excited for another way to use them!
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